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This paper assesses the usability of developed haptic interface features to support future development of haptically enhanced science learning applications for students with visual impairments. Of the features developed and evaluated, three features are described in this study: Haptic Boundary, Menu Selection, and Object Recognition. Two focus groups participated in an interview and usability session. Results from this study give insight to the needs of the visually impaired community in regard to haptic applications.

In this paper we describe our experience deriving evaluation metrics for a systems-level framework called Ripple that connects software engineering and usability engineering life cycles. This evaluation was conducted with eight teams of graduate students (falling under four types of development models) competing in a joint software engineering and usability engineering course to create a software solution for a real world client. We describe the challenges of evaluating systems-level frameworks and the approach we used to derive metrics given our evaluation context. We conclude with the outcome of this evaluation and the effectiveness of the metrics we employed.

The goal of this research is to understand the concept of police communication environments related to interoperable issues. Interoperability is critical to both inter- and intra- organizational communication. Especially in the emergency operations with multiple groups at the same place, the importance of interoperability has been much appreciated. This study used semi-structured interviews to examine the police communication issues and reconceptualize interoperability in the police communication domain. Based on the interview, we identified three important concepts to specify interoperable groups. First, highly distributed decision making processes are problematic for multiple communication needs. Second, a police team is self-organized at the scene. Finally, their operational boundaries are tentative based on contextual information. Based on these main concepts, we provided high-level suggestions to design a police communication system based on cognitive radio technology.

This paper presents experiences from a study that included five users with Severe Visual Impairments (SVIs), fashion designers, and human factors engineers. We used participatory design (PD) to develop a wayfinding and object-recognition system. The PD study consisted of three sessions and was designed to include actual users in the design process. The primary goal of the PD was to validate the system concept and to determine the attributes of system interaction. Two of the three sessions are discussed here. We obtained several insights from a technological perspective, textile and apparel perspective, and user interface design perspective. Among the results identified, users with SVIs preferred to wear assistive technology unless that was not distracting to the participant or those that came into contact with the participant. Auditory feedback was chosen as a primary modality in user interface design, and we realized that constructing a good pool of PD members is essential to transform actual users' needs and requirements into the design process.